The deciduous trees shed their foliage, the plants cease to put forth fresh leaves, and all vegetable life languishes under the unwholesome heat.

The grass withers on the baked and cloven earth, and red dust settles on the branches and thirsty brushwood.

The insects, deprived of their accustomed food, disappear underground or hide beneath the decaying bark; the water-beetles bury themselves in the hardened mud of the pools, and the _helices_ retire into the crevices of the stones or the hollows amongst the roots of the trees, closing the apertures of their shells with the hybernating epiphragm.

Butterflies are no longer seen hovering over the flowers, the birds appear fewer and less joyous, and the wild animals and crocodiles, driven by the drought from their accustomed retreats, wander through the jungle, and even venture to approach the village wells in search of water.

Man equally languishes under the general exhaustion, ordinary exertion becomes distasteful, and the native Singhalese, although inured to the climate, move with lassitude and reluctance.
Meanwhile the air becomes loaded to saturation with aqueous vapour drawn up by the augmented force of evaporation acting vigorously over land and sea: the sky, instead of its brilliant blue, assumes the sullen tint of lead, and not a breath disturbs the motionless rest of the clouds that hang on the lower range of hills.